A Busy Fall Part 3: Rock n Roll St. Louis Marathon

After a couple weekends with more laid back endurance activities in the books, it was time to close out the 2011 season with my last A race, the inaugural Rock n Roll St. Louis Marathon.  Despite this being my second A race of the season, it has clearly been the focal point of my training…so maybe it’s my A+ race.  Having not done an open marathon since 2008 and having bad memories of blowing up at the wall in my previous 2 attempts in Arizona and DC, the marathon has been a race that I have learned to respect.  My main goal going into the race was to not break down and run a consistently paced race…no specific time goal.  Here’s how the weekend went…

The wife and I arrived in St. Louis Friday evening to stay at my sister and her fiancé’s place.  They, along with my dad, would once again also be participants in the same event.  “The family that races together, stays together” would be an apt motto for our family.  We made a point of getting into town early in the evening since we were going to be taken to our first (for Susan and me) NHL game.  The Blues game was exciting and our upper deck location made it easy to follow the action.  To add to the excitement, the Blues pulled the game out in overtime before having to go to a shootout.  After the game, the rest of Friday evening was quiet as we settled in.

Blues Game

Another reason we had planned on arriving in St. Louis Friday was to have Saturday morning open for Susan to take some engagement photos for Kelley and Jason.  They got off to an early start with a variety of outfits and locations to shoot in mind.  This was Susan’s first try at engagement photography and the results were successful.  I did not tag along with the photo shoot and instead made my way to Carondelet Park for a very short run on the southernmost portion of Sunday’s marathon course.  After the run, I waited for my parents to arrive from Louisville and the three of us made our way to packet pickup.  Earlier in the day, the crowds weren’t too bad so we progressed through the pickup and expo quickly.  After getting back to our home-base for the weekend, we awaited the arrival of the photography team before grabbing a late lunch.  The rest of the afternoon involved spectating at Jason’s kickball game briefly before relaxing at the house for a bit.  With it being the midst of World Series madness with the Cardinals in the mix, our pre-race dinner was watching the game with a couple hundred other rabid fans at the Sports Zone (a local sports bar).  The energy was awesome and the game was pretty wild too.  However, I was concerned about being ready for Sunday’s race, so I cut out early after dinner and returned to the house to get my gear in order and head to bed.

Sample Engagement Picture Awesomeness

Sunday started off bright and early (or dark and early in actuality), as is usually the case for race mornings.  We grabbed our gear and headed downtown to the starting area to wait nervously and make our way through the pre-race rituals.  Weather was looking pretty perfect as dawn came, starting temperatures around 50 with overcast skies but low threat of rain and low humidity.  The temperature would remain mild until mid-afternoon when the clouds cleared, so the weather could not have been much better for the duration of the race.  After dancing nervously and calling it a warm-up, stripping down to my race outfit, and kissing the wife good-bye I headed into the corral with the other sheep…I mean runners.  Not too much later (in reality, not in perception) the gun was fired and we were off.

Being in the first corral, I was pretty close to the starting mat and near the front of the swarm of runners.  There was still a fair amount of navigation to take care of though as we sorted ourselves out and claimed a position.  My main focus other than finding space was to not go out too fast, so I checked my Garmin relatively regularly through the initial miles to make sure I was at a sustainable (or slightly slower than) pace.  By mile 3, we had begun to string out enough that the roads seemed more open.  We made our way up Washington Ave in this section and away from downtown toward St Louis University’s campus.  The section between downtown and SLU didn’t offer much in the way of scenery or spectators, but it was early enough that outside motivation wasn’t really necessary.  As we turned to pass the historic Fox Theatre, the crowd returned in full force.  There was even a group from the local Y who had fashioned a star-shaped arch of balloons for runners to pass through, so I obliged.  From here, we moved past the SLU chapel and around the back of campus before turning south.  So far, pacing was nice and steady between 7:25-7:35 for each mile.

After passing through the bold colored signs of bars in restaurant in an obviously gay community, the course began the tour of the South St. Louis parks.  First on the list was Tower Grove Park.  This was our first encounter with the park and around the 8 mile mark of the overall course.  Also notable was that the marathoners and half-marathoners made the split at this point.  As we divided to go our separate ways, I was amazed to see the imbalance between full and half participants.  There were a huge number of half-marathoners, outnumbering the full runners at nearly a 10:1 ratio.  Needless to say, as I turned with the handful of other marathoners to take the long way home, I was feeling a little lonely.  It was time for the real race to begin.

The park tour continued, passing Sublette, Tilles, Lindenwood, and Willmore Park’s (each complete with their own band) as we continued to head away from the finish line.  I hit the halfway point and was still feeling strong.  There was stiffness popping up occasionally, but I felt in control and continued to down gels every 5 miles as I plodded along at just under 7:30 pace.  The surroundings became more familiar as I entered Carondelet Park, where I had scouted the course the day prior.  I had a boost of energy knowing every step from here was in the direction of downtown and the finish.  Leaving the park, I had covered around 16.5 miles and was not running with much company anymore.  To provide myself some additional mid-to-late race motivation, I saved my iPod for just this moment.  Wandering into my own tunes with less than 10 miles to go felt great, and I picked up the pace just slightly.

En route back to downtown, the route took us past Bevo Mill Restaurant (sp?) right around the time we hit the 20 mile mark.  This was a good point for me to see where I stood.  I certainly wasn’t 100%, but I was moving along steadily and could not see myself crashing in the near future.  The course did not make it easy on us though, as mile 20 was nearly all uphill on a straight grind from the restaurant until we re-encountered Tower Grove Park.  I felt good as I ran beside the park…I was past the 20mile mental barrier and on flat roads for now.  I had the confidence that I was going to finish strong.  However, at this point, my legs were pretty worn down, so picking up the pace was not an option.  The goal became to maintain the pace to the finish.

As I exited the Tower Grove Park area, I got another morale boost as the course re-merged with the half-marathon course which was now filled with the half walking crowd.  It was a large crowd and I was again amazed at the number of half participants.  Luckily, the roads were wide and they created a separate lane for full marathoners so I didn’t have to navigate traffic.  As I passed the mass of walkers, many of them yelled encouragement to the marathoners as we went.  Plus, now there were a bunch of witnesses if I decided I needed to walk, so it provided quite a bit of motivation.  The half-marathoners would accompany me the remainder of the way to the finish.

As I hit mile 23 near Lafayette Park I was pleased since I felt like I had a solid race in the bag.  But 3+ miles still seems like quite a drag so I was ready to be in the finish chute.  I kind of went into a trance in this section where I didn’t feel good or particularly motivated, but I didn’t need to stop and was close enough that I wouldn’t have anyways.  I just had to get the work done at this point.  The roads opened up around mile 25 and I could see Union Station off in the distance.  The finish was at the park just on the other side of the station.  It seemed to take longer to cover the distance until Union Station was passing on my right, but by the time I reached it I could hear the finish line hoopla, so put away my iPod and prepared to take in the finish experience.  A female runner that had been near me for the last mile or so got news from a spectator that she was 5th (if I remember correctly) woman on the road as we rounded the last bend into the home stretch.  I eased up a bit and let her kick ahead to have plenty of time to enjoy her impressive finish, then I cruised in shortly behind with a smile on my face (a rarity for me at the end of races, although I’m sure it looked more like a grimace).  I stopped the clock, officially at 3:15:50 which to my surprise was a top-100 overall finish.

Not my best look, but victorious nonetheless

I cheerfully made my way through the finisher’s chute and waited in line to grab some nutrition.  All of a sudden my legs realized what had happened in the past few hours because I was overcome with throbbing pain from my glutes all the way to the bottoms of my feet.  It was pretty excruciating, so I wasn’t in such a good mood anymore.  I continued out to find my family moving at a snail’s pace now, before settling down on a stone barrier to rest/stretch.  It took a good 10 minutes for the pain to subside and I could attempt real movement again, but by the time we moved back to the stretch to watch our other runners finish I felt pretty decent, and incredibly tired.  The three remaining runners decided to do the whole event together and crossed the finish within a minute of each other.  What makes it more impressive is that Jason, my sister’s fiancé, had not done a marathon before and was actually registered for the half…he just “felt pretty good” at mile 8 and decided to attempt the full.  My dad and sister also both PR’d after doing some solid sandbagging when talking about the race in the weeks leading up to it.

It was a great way to end the 2011 season and I’ve finally conquered my marathon demons, so have a high level of confidence heading into the 2012 season.  But first, off-season, vacation, and the holidays…and did I mention a vacation.